Author: David Gorsline

At the park: 39

Yesterday, Huntley Meadows Park manager Kevin Munroe, along with staffer Elena Ryan, gave a recap of plans for restoration of the park’s central wetland. Much has changed and much has stayed the same since plans were discussed in public meetings in 2007. Since then, the commonwealth has okayed the dam design as meeting “special low hazard” criteria, reflecting projections that the impact downstream of a failed dam during a 100-year storm would be no worse than if the dam weren’t there at all. However, the county’s Department of Public Works and Environmental Services insists on a 600-foot wide spillway to the north of the dam, to mitigate the potential of the earthen structure being overtopped. Such a spillway would stretch most of the way from the observation tower to the hike-bike trail.

So Kevin and his team are (somewhat reluctantly) considering a concrete structure instead, which would provide its own spillway. They’re looking at designs and facings that would temper the aesthetic intrusion of an obviously man-made structure. Kevin showed one slide of a dam at the Patuxent reserve that looks not unattractive, to my eye.

Plans to remove and replant have also been shelved, along with dredging and construction pools. As Kevin put it, the intention is to use water levels to manage the plant life.

Elena Ryan has been looking at the relationship between rainfall and water levels in the wetland. She’s got two years of observations from a water level gauge positioned off the boardwalk on the near side of the tower. Her regression analysis tells her that for every inch of rainfall, water levels in the wetland rise 3.25 inches over the course of three days.

Kevin recapped the purpose of the restoration project with the following elevator speech (paraphrased by me): Beaver marshes move through stages of succession; one of these, the hemi-marsh, shows the highest level of biodiversity; because both biodiversity and marshlands are in decline, the Park Authority and Huntley Meadows community are working to manage the wetland to hemi-marsh conditions.

This summary introduces a term of wetland ecology new to me: the hemi-marsh. A hemi-marsh (also known as low-water marsh) is characterized as a 50-50 mix of open water and emergent vegetation. However, it’s a relatively unstable condition. Since mid-century or so, the park’s wetland has been oscillating between wetter lake marsh/high-water marsh conditions (at the extreme, a eutrophic lake), and drier wet meadow/dry marsh conditions.

Hemi-marsh conditions favor certain bird species of concern in our region, among them Least Bittern (Ixobrychus exilis), Common Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus), Pied-billed Grebe (Podilymbus podiceps), and King Rail (Rallus elegans), considered an indicator species for hemi-marsh.

chowing downAfter talks, we took a brief walk with Kevin in the park as late afternoon came on. Ice has begun to skim the water edges. My fingers and toes haven’t developed their winter anti-freeze yet. Northern Shovelers (Anas clypeata) and Green-winged Teal (A. crecca) have moved in for the season; most of the male shovelers are out of their eclipse plumage and are dressed for breeding already. An American Beaver (Castor canadensis) seemed more interested in his crepuscular meal than in our small party.

Is that supposed to be an eagle?

don't count on itA few weeks ago, I noticed that the old sign along the outer loop of the Beltway in Montgomery County, the one that read “Fairfax, VA 15” with reflective dots filling in the letters, had been taken down before I’d taken the time to get a photograph of it. So I’m resolved to be more aggressive about documenting obsolescent street furniture. And as a first example, consider this sign just outside a Metro Center subway exit directing drivers and walkers to the old convention center. The building was destroyed five years ago. If the ugly 1980s-era logo still manages to communicate “convention center” to anyone, at least it serves to point them toward the new convention center as well, since it is somewhat to the north of where the old building was.

House of Gold

The technical team shines in House of Gold, Gregory S. Moss’s satirical fantasia on hypermultimedia and sexualized celebrity that leaps off from the JonBenét Ramsey murder case. David Zinn’s three-level set incorporates any number of devices that simultaneously heighten our experience and put distance between us and the proceedings: mirrors above an attic bedroom, a candy-colored dungeon in which our best views are not live but rather via video projections. The glossy white kitchen on the middle level is of necessity serviceable to the closing scene’s mayhem.

The play’s narrative covers some familiar ground, but it is not concerned with the facts of the case, considering that all of the principals (an over-committed investigator, a skeevy neighbor, a fat schoolfriend with identity issues, parents with their own fading dreams) share in the culpability—not a whodunit but a wedunit. As audience, we are asked why we devote so much energy to such a tawdry, gruesome case: at one point, The Girl (the assured Kaaron Briscoe), trying to avoid hearing a horror story told by Jasper (the generously endowed Randy Blair), cries, “That’s awful!—Then what?”

Emily Townley as Woman has an arresting monologue about her own loss of youth, “…when I no longer bent the light.”

Matt Tierney’s sound design is killer. It ranges from a subtle, almost inaudible easy listening underscore to dangerously loud piercing alarm sirens. Actors wear body mics or use handheld mics on stands: often it’s the electronically amplified words that express a character’s innermost thoughts. Those handheld mics capture other sounds on stage, as in the stunning opening breakfast scene where the noises of frying sausage and crunching toast are fired like domestic weapons.

  • House of Gold, by Gregory S. Moss, directed by Sarah Benson, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

    Thankful

    • A ribbon marker sewn into a book binding; a store full of office supplies; a cable channel dedicated to ice hockey.
    • Elections happen every two years (plus the off-year Virginia governor’s race), even if I don’t always like the outcome.
    • (And this is not always the case:) My onsite consulting job: interesting projects; smart, articulate people to work with; sane project managers; a stimulating location downtown; a (usually) predictable, comfortable commute.
    • Art, unlike life, lets you rehearse.
    • Indoor plumbing.

    Working on it

    CALLIE. I can’t connect with mountains, trees, the little animals—they snub me. You know how you can be with two other people and you’re all having a great time. Then the person sitting next to you says something in French and the two of them burst into laughter, best laugh anyone’s had all night. And you’re left out because you took Spanish in the seventh grade, not French. That’s what nature does to me. Speaks French to the other people at the table.

    —Diana Son, Stop Kiss, sc. 1

    AF of L

    construction siteFor the past year-plus that I’ve been commuting to downtown, I had often admired this trim little building standing by itself on a trapezoidal pentagonal lot on the northwest corner of 9th Street and Massachusetts Avenue, N.W. A plaque at the corner identifies it with the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada.

    Alas, last week I noticed construction fencing walling off the building. The lights were still on inside the building, but I feared that it would soon go under the ball. The Circulator stop out front has been decommissioned.

    That seems less likely, since the building is listed (item 74002154) in the National Register of Historic Places as the American Federation of Labor building. The Sullivanesque edifice was built in 1915 by Milburn, Heister & Company, and served as headquarters for the AF of L for 40 years until its merger with the CIO, at which point the plumbers moved in.

    The United Association is now headquartered in Annapolis. I didn’t track down the current owner or tenants.

    Grand Central

    A leader from the 18 November 2010 number of The Economist:

    Public behaviour still treats the internet like a village, in which new faces are welcome and anti-social behaviour a rarity. A better analogy would be a railway station in a big city, where hustlers gather to prey on the credulity of new arrivals. Wise behaviour in such places is to walk fast, avoid eye contact and be brusque with strangers. Try that online.

    Woodies, not ducks

    John D. submits a lovely post on the coming and going of the Woodward & Lothrop department store and its flagship building(s) on the block bounded by F and G and 10th and 11th Streets, N.W.

    The large, new [Carlisle] building [at 11th and F] allowed for expanded lines of goods. In December 1888, Woodward observed to The Washington Post that “our new bric-a-brac department has led everything, and this trade has been truly phenomenal,” although the article frustratingly does not divulge what particular bric-a-brac was so irresistible.

    In the early decades of the 20th century, two buildings replaced the Carlisle structure, filling in most of the block.

    The escalator in Woodies, as I recall from the 1980s, was cramped and did nothing to stage the floor on which you were arriving. The handrail suggested a segmented worm. But, as an image in the post documents, it was at one time a technical marvel, an Electric Stairway connecting the levels of this emporium.

    Another survey

    Paul Baicich and Wayne Petersen report in the current Birding Community E-Bulletin:

    Researchers at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, are studying the risks and benefits to birds caused by human behavior and technology (e.g., alternative energy efforts, cats, windows, and communications) as they are perceived by Americans with varying interests in birds. The researchers do not expect those responding to the survey to know the degree of risk associated with each of these behaviors or technologies. Indeed, some consequences remain unknown. The responses on these perceived risks will help more fully understand public opinions and behavior. The responses are expected to provide tools to raise bird conservation awareness.

    In the closing pages of the survey, the researchers share some statistics about avian mortality that are rather surprising.

    Please take the 25-minute survey.

    It’s magic

    Robbins Barstow, Wethersfield, Connecticut’s prototype of the vlogger, has passed away. His 1956 Disneyland Dream, a home movie documentary of the family trip to Disneyland (by way of a 3M Scotch Tape contest), with narration added in 1995 (and more than a few corny jokes), is available through the Internet Archive. Disneyland Dream is one of the few amateur works named to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.

    Mr. Barstow’s survivors include the original cast of Disneyland Dream: his wife, the former Margaret Vanderbeek, whom he married in 1942; his sons, David and Dan; and his daughter, now known as Cedar.

    I order just coffee

    MAX TARASOV. Arthur, no one come! You sell donut and no one wants donut anymore! People now, they eat yogurt and banana, not donut. And people who want donut can go to Duckin’ Donut and eat the shit cake! If they want coffee, they go to Starbuck and pay four dollars for caramel fuck-a-cheeto. You are only donut shop on North Side, you have said this. All the others close. Why? Because they are selling product no one want! Donut is like videotape, it is over! Time change everything, and donut has been left behind.

    — Tracy Letts, Superior Donuts, act 1

    Healthy Fairfax

    Residents of Fairfax County (as well as the municipalities of Fairfax, Falls Church, Clifton, Herndon, and Vienna) are encouraged to complete a one-page anonymous survey prepared by the Partnership for a Healthier Fairfax. What should we do to improve the community’s health? The survey closes November 15, so please help out my friend Marie and fill out a questionnaire today.